


all the great voyagers return

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [231]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bad Decisions, Family Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Medical Trauma, Mithrim, Negotiations, Political Alliances, title from a poem by Barbara Howes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23968522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: I offer you safety.
Relationships: Aredhel & Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Maglor | Makalaurë, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Finrod Felagund | Findaráto & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [231]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 14
Kudos: 27





	1. Maglor

Maedhros, in the doorway, is colored by the same light that falls from any other candle. His hair is burnished bronze; his face burns tallow-gold. The grief of him is in his shadow, but they don’t yet understand that.

Maglor is dreaming, and he dreams, as always, of the past.

 _You knew more than I_ , he says.

His brother is beautiful. Tall, perfect, unscarred. Holding his body and spirit away from the sound of the wrath, the memory of fear.

Maedhros says, over and over and over,

_I never know what the future holds._

The lines of his face all wrong, the length of his hair all wrong, the bandaged limbs all wrong, the space where a hand and fingers should be—

It is morning. Morning in Mithrim, in the old study with the map-lined walls, sharp-edged by the secrets of a trap door, the tips of dried pen-nibs, and the scrape of Maglor’s fingernails against the desk.

Maglor could scream, here, beyond a door a man once closed and locked against him, intending death.

The man was not his father, but he might have been.

 _You_ , he thinks. Pain has lasted long enough to give him clarity. It is a feeling he considered lost in the miasma of despair, along with his poetry. His music. _You, Athair. You left us, and your Morgoth came._

Light filters through the narrow window. This window looks hillward; behind Mithrim. Not towards the lake. Maglor flexes his cramped fingers. His mouth is bitter with nightmares.

His eyes are dry.

He cannot unsee the brother who returned.

(The way they cut open his skin over the bridge of his nose, his lips. His very bones have suffered.)

(And that is nothing, to the horror of his handless arm.)

Maglor twists his own hands together, and finds no comfort in the gesture. He is keenly aware of himself, in a manner so long-distant as to be stark and unfamiliar. He failed, in venturing forth the day before, with pride he could not bolster by force of arms.

He failed by—by _wishing_ for force of arms.

“ _I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar_ ;” he whispers. It is a dare, an awakening. He has not—he has not declaimed, nor felt he had the right to, since the fateful days of late spring.

Now, he rallies. It is a punishment he deserves, to reclaim the words of a poet.

Not his own words.

_I never know what the future holds._

Not Maedhros’.

He rises, and chants,

“ _Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,_

_The soul of Adonais, like a star,_

_Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are_.”

It would have been easier if Maedhros was dead; if Fingon had found and buried him.

That is, it would have been easier, then, for Maglor to die, too.

He washes his hair and dresses. He has clean shirts and trousers—Caranthir will not turn their laundry over to Mithrim’s women, and insists on tending to it himself. Maglor combs his hair and notes how it reaches, now, to his shoulders. Maedhros’ should be longer than that.

He does not know why his mind returns, again and again, to such a comparatively insignificant matter.

Maybe he cannot bear to long envision the gashed nose, the bruised cheek—

The bandages, and what they hide—

He does not pray. _That_ is one failing he shares with Celegorm and Curufin, though they are unlike in other respects. They none of them turn to the God they forsook. They worshipped their father, while they lived, and they court death, now that he is dead.

They do it in their own ways. Celegorm kills, and Curufin excavates the cavern of his soul’s grave, and Maglor…

Maglor lies awake in darkness, silently.

To be silent, for one such as him—

It is near the end of a considered time.

The light on the lake, and the memory of Athair—it is almost as if he was there within Mithrim when they came to ruin it, how they must have looked as they waited. How proud they were, across the bridge, on weary horses. Death behind them. Hope before them, but only Athair’s hope.

Maglor had been angry, then.

He tells the sentries to let him pass; he goes alone. They do not even attempt to prevent him. This could be looked upon in two, equally bladed ways. It could be respect, or disinterest.

If he dies—

Maglor smiles. Close-lipped, and in the sight of no one. 

If he dies, they will make Celegorm and Curufin their leaders together. Or they will kill each other slowly, Mithrim’s men and the Feanorian boys.

(Maglor will not die today.)

He has spent a good deal of time consumed by jealousy, by fear. He feels it still; vice nips at his heels as much as it haunts his dreams. That is a murderer’s fate, and he _was_ (will always be) a murderer.

He is no longer a son, no longer worthy to be counted as a godfather, and if he is a brother, there is only one person for whom that was ever enough—

The tents are weather-stained: heavy canvas stretched over uneven poles. They were raised up in haste, which gives Maglor some insight into his uncle’s thinking.

FIngolfin expected to be invited into Mithrim.

Fingolfin shall have his wish, now.

Three sentries stand between Maglor and the camp. He raises his hands, to show that he carries nothing.

He did not even bring his gun; he made himself a sacrifice before they could.

“I come in peace,” he says.

These men don’t know Feanorians, but for the rumors that have, no doubt, been fed to them like poison stirred through wine. One, a rangy towheaded fellow, squints.

“In peace, eh? We’ll see about that.”

“Wister. It’s all right.”

Maglor cannot weep, yet. Certainly, he cannot weep at the sight of Finrod.

Finrod, if he is as weary as the dark shadows beneath his eyes suggest, does not falter in gaze or stance. He waits for the sentries to disperse; he waits for Maglor to speak.

That was always his way. Watching and testing; more cunning than Fingon, but less gentle than Maedhros.

Maglor used to think they were equals, of a sort. Finrod and himself. Maedhros shone above them (though Maglor knew his darker secrets). Fingon was a child.

But Finrod strove for greatness.

And Maglor—

His talent, his promise. They were _already_ considered great.

“I’ve come to speak to Fingolfin,” Maglor says. “Not you.”

Finrod’s lip twist. It is not quite a sneer. It is—sympathy, but Maglor must own it no wonder that he struggled to recognize the expression.

It has been a long while since anyone wore it, before his eyes.

“Maglor,” Finrod says, “What has become of you?”

Maglor scrapes and scrabbles for his pride. He does so standing still. The wind in his damp hair is unpleasantly cold. “What sort of question is that?”

He thinks he sees a little of the sneer, then.

“Our uncle is with Maedhros.” Finrod divulges this. Maybe he thinks they have nothing more to hide, this side of Mithrim. “Come with me.”

Fingon must be there too, in that tent. Else he would be prowling the shore and demanding justification from intruders. Maglor’s heart seizes up. There is pain in his arms, his hands, the lines of his throat and shoulders. All the parts of him that made music sing silently, now. He would call it a curse, but he knows that no one else would call it anything.

He sees Aredhel from afar, talking with Turgon and Artanis.

Maedhros took it upon himself to befriend these lesser cousins. Maedhros—

(The lines of his face all wrong, the length of his hair all wrong, the bandaged limbs all wrong.)

The camp is not recognizable to him. Celegorm had described it, but then Celegorm, even when overwritten by panic and grief, is a hunter rather than a visionary. Pain cannot cloud his eyes.

Maglor, having grieved, remembers nothing but his brother.

The tent to which Finrod leads him is not the largest tent. It is, however, positioned near a large fire. Water is boiling over it.

The woman who tends the fire has a repellant, leather-masked, one-eyed face; stitched and fitted all wrong.

Maglor gazes on her in horror, then tears himself away.

A worse sight awaits him. It hurts all the more for its tender poverty. Maedhros at his worst, in Maglor’s care, was still lovely, stalwart in his birthright of talent and grandeur. _I will protect you_ , Maglor used to snap at him, in the lonely halls at Valinor Park. _If that is what you are after. I will not tell Athair, if that is what you are afraid of, or Grandfather—or Mother—_

Fingolfin is seated on a low stool beside the long, blanket-covered lines of Maedhros’ body. A steaming bowl is in his hands. A father-look is on his face.

Maglor rejects that last somehow the more, more even than Fingon kneeling at Maedhros’ head. Fingon’s hands are in his hair. His own hair is braided back from his face. He looks clean and neat and almost calm, as he observes his mysterious doctorly duties. 

(They must have been feeding him.)

“Maglor has come to speak with you,” Finrod says. Fingon starts, at this, but Fingolfin does not.

Could they—

No. They could not have been _expecting_ him. Not Finrod. Not Fingolfin. Maglor will not allow it, will not grant them the privilege of knowing what is in his heart.

He barely knew himself, until now.

He has been afraid, he understands, that he does not love Maedhros _better_ than they do—these cold-hearted, virtuous kin, with their plain faces and capable hands. Maglor knows that his family is a wound. The body bleeds when it is cut to pieces; brilliant and bright though that blood may flow.

And _he_ survives, even as he rots, and he loves Maedhros _more_.

For that love, then, he does this:

Enters the tent. Beholds the unbeautiful. Begs a favor in offering one.

His father would not understand, perhaps, but his father is dead.

“You want to take him _away_?” Fingon demands incredulously, though it was not to Fingon that Maglor spoke. “Out of the question!’

It takes—it takes the scarred lips, the sunken hollows of the bruised and blemished throat, the awful _stillness_ ; all these keep Maglor civil.

That, and Fingolfin shaking his head in reproof.

“Fingon, let him finish.”

Maglor knows that he resembles his father a little. He has the same genius, the knife of his spirit held at the core of his body.

Perhaps the two are the same. If that is so, then _he_ is not the same.

(An image: Maedhros, night after night after night, walking the floor with his face in his hands, _Jesus, Maglor, leave off—_

_Do you hate him?_

Then silence, guilty for both of them. Because that question was betrayal, even when their father had asked Maedhros time and again to betray, as Maglor knew in his bones that he _had_.)

“I offer you safety,” he says. It is not a grand or gentlemanly gesture; it is begging. Sometimes it _is_ begging, when you offer a father your home. “You may enter Mithrim.”

Fingolfin watches him carefully. This should not come as an insult, but it does. If Maglor says, _I am not my father_ , whom will it serve?

He keeps civil.

“Will your brothers agree?” his uncle asks.

Maglor told them not of his going; they will not know when or how to expect his return.

“I am the leader of the fort,” he says. “When my father died, and Maedhros—”

But he stumbles, there. He cannot—he does not want to say, what Maedhros was doing.

But Fingolfin presses no further. He does not ask Maglor to return to the night when Maedhros forced one last embrace, when Maglor let grief be anger, when the hooves clattered into darkness, never to be heard with proper weight again.

Finrod has been silent all this while. Both he and Fingon are closer to Maedhros than Maglor is. Maglor does not like to see them ranged there beside him, like two watchful hawks.

“Will we find safety in your fort?” Finrod asks. “With those strangers?”

“There are no traitors in Mithrim,” Maglor answers. He does not say, _no more_. Ulfang is dead and gone. His name shall not ring out again—

Not in Maglor’s fort.

Fingolfin links his hands together and stares down at them. He used to do that long ago, and Maglor thought it was fury suppressed.

 _He’ll hit Athair if he has the chance,_ Maglor said to himself, and waited with a child’s sick, unholy thrill, for the blow to fall.

It never did.

Fingolfin says, “We are a camp with several leaders, here. I will consult with them as to the exact numbers that will enter. But it would serve your brother better to be within real walls. Resting on a better bed.”

“We can give that to him.” Maglor does not know how to answer the rest of the words; is it a show of strength? A strategic ploy?

They came so far. They suffered and died. These faces rival his own, for pain endured. But it isn’t the same. Fingon, so much older than he was when Maglor resented his clumsy adolescent overtures, is not ruled by the cruelty of his circumstances.

Finrod, with the grim set of his jaw, is likewise implacable.

_Grandfather took us all aside—the four of us—and said that we would all be the men of our houses, someday._

Maglor is looking at his cousins because he cannot look at Maedhros for more than an instant. He came to bargain for Maedhros, to offer what remaining strength he has for Maedhros, and yet…

 _Why would we both be men of our house?_ He asked, putting a hand, as it were, to the fault-seam in the logic.

Maedhros answered:

 _No one would ever wish to exclude you,_ cano.

He is going to leave Maedhros here again. Under the stained canvas, amid the sacks and barrels of (no doubt) hard-won supplies. He is all wounds, but they have cleaned him—with clear liquor, boiled water, wrung cotton. Fingon would know what to do. If Maedhros worsens, hungers, wakes—

Someone cut off his hand, and Fingon saved his life.

Maglor understands why Celegorm ran.

He puts that thought away.

“Today,” he says, shifting his gaze above the road of his brother’s body. Finrod may scorn him, and Fingon may loathe him. They feel nothing that he has not felt first himself. “Will you come today?”

The hush is not strategy. They are not at war. If only their caution _was_ war, rather than love. Maglor sways on his feet.

His uncle nods. Fingolfin—Maglor has never seen him, like this, because he learned from childhood to see only what made the world fit together.

(He sang the rest, but his song has departed. The future holds nothing but that from which ear and eye cannot afford to hide.)

“We will come today,” Fingolfin agrees. “At least in part. Again, I do not know what the rest of the camp shall decide upon, and I would not speak for them.”

“You do not fear that we shall hold you hostage?” Maglor asks, and tastes his cousins’ anger. He is, after all, a little of his father’s son—and that is what _they_ will see. But it is a child’s question.

Fingolfin shakes his head slowly. “I do not fear that, Maglor.”

All this time, his uncle has remained seated. Raising his eyes to meet Maglor’s. All this time, Maedhros has not lowered himself.

If one stands on the edge of a cliff—if one walks back, back, back from the edge with each footstep a memory—

Fingon clears his throat.

Finrod is silent.

Outside, the camp of strangers moves with the easy, industrious self-absorption of bees. They eat, they sleep, they befriend. Maglor (who has never been much for friendship) can recognize the firm formation of an alliance. But—and here is the mystery—he does not believe that Fingolfin’s confidence stems from the knowledge of fighting power.

“Very well.” (The doom is on him.) “I will go on ahead, and give the alert. How soon can you bring—him?”

Fingon huffs impatiently. “It will be a slow process, Maglor. It is not safe to move—”

“You must have dragged him many miles,” Maglor snaps, his resolve fracturing at last. “And yet he lives.”

( _He lives he lives he—_ )

Fingolfin raises a hand. Finrod rests one on Fingon’s shoulder. Maedhros’, shorn off, is naught but a ghost.

“Will two hours be agreeable?” Fingolfin asks.

Fingon chews his lips, a stolen trait, but he nods. “Good enough.”

“Estrela and I will help you,” Finrod assures him, in a low voice. “Whatever you should need.”

Maglor should depart. “I shall expect you in two hours,” he says, as coldly as he can, and Fingolfin nods gravely, rising. He has business to attend to, after all. And as for Maglor, _he_ expects his feet to move beneath him, to carry him out of doors, into a world he has had no part in saving.

Instead his fingers twitch, grasping at invisible strings.

His voice catches in his throat, as it never did in song.

“Can I touch him?”

They are proud and generous, surrounded by proud and generous people. It is a privilege; a matter of being easily unfeeling, to be so free in love.

Maglor has shown his hand; they will deny him, now.

Maglor crosses the bridge. The sentries stand aside. His pulse thumps in his ears. No one exclaims; no one is waiting for him, here.

( _You may_ , said his uncle, and he did not even warn him to be gentle.)

He kneels, rooted in the cold earth. He can see, now, the rise and fall of his brother’s chest. Fire floods his eyes, his throat. His whole body recalls its old patterns—its _oldest_ patterns, when he was nearly small enough to be carried on Mother’s hip. In those days, Maedhros, though not equal to his weight, would lift him up sometimes, would hush him until Maglor laughed away whatever baby-hurt had vexed him.

Maglor’s hands.

Maglor’s hands, trembling. There is no comfort. No answering voice.

_We are all alone, and it would have been better if you were dead—_

But the rise and fall of breath!

Maglor does not take the remaining hand. Instead he fits his own against the sunken cheeks, mindful of the bruises there. The skin is dry and warm.

The scream does not leave Maglor. It breaks like a wave. He drags the tips of his fingers, lightly, very lightly, under Maedhros’ blind eyes.

A world, this. 


	2. Celegorm

They are bringing Maedhros over the bridge.

Celegorm does not want to recognize the event as it happens; does not want to understand the world and his place in it before the eyes of other people. It is the first time in his furious life that he can remember yearning for the slow plod of one moment leading to the next, moments in which he might have forestalled—this.

Maglor is that way; he craves ceremony. Curse the likeness.

And curse _him_ , for this was Maglor’s scheme. Celegorm knows that because Maglor’s whip-thin figure stands nearer him than Maedhros, order all wrong, posture all wrong.

Maglor’s shoulders stretch back, back, like the crooked wings of a grounded bird. Obtaining power not for himself, the fool.

Celegorm was hunting, up over Mithrim hill, in the wind-chased morning. He saw no birds. The buried bombs are all along the far edge of the open land, where Athair first laid them, but Celegorm has trained Huan to sniff them out, and they scale the treacherous terrain together almost every day. It would be difficult to attack Mithrim from the north. One would have to skate down shifting earth and gravel to reach the field and fort.

Celegorm was hunting, for he trusted no food store he did not make, and then he returned, coming into the stony crook of Mithrim’s arm, where Maedhros used to split wood in the yard.

He had seen his brother’s ghost everywhere, until he saw it once and for always, lying meekly at his feet.

The sight was ruination.

Cold-eared and hot-hearted, he gave the deer over to one of the women—nameless, to him—who does the cooking. Then he passed through the backdoor, and into the main hall, and found it largely empty.

His father died here, but he doesn’t often think of Feanor.

When Feanor was dead, Celegorm hadn’t yet lost—

And on the other side, through another door, refusing to let the ghost be of the past, is Maedhros.

Borne aloft by Finrod and Turgon. Following Fingolfin, and hateful Fingon. There are other men behind them—men and women and Aredhel. The weather-beaten Gwindor comes last. A cautious man, Celegorm thought him, when he gave him any thought at all.

Gwindor knew him. Knew Maedhros. He was in the tent, his brothers said. Playing at salvation, aping Fingon’s manner.

Celegorm used to keep secret parts of himself for a chosen few. With their deaths, so died Celegorm. It is one way to honor the lost.

(A nest of robin’s eggs protected from the twins, why does he remember _that_? Because it was May—it will _always_ be May, when the world begins and ends—)

In winter, a mockery of life draws near.

There are so many other people. There is horse-faced Nora, and the ones who used to side with Ulfang. There is Homer, the lout; there, the stragglers of Athair’s old band. They are slipping in and out of Mithrim’s ratholes, and they wait.

(Maedhros, shivering and bleeding in the darkness, had been ashamed to let Celegorm _see_.)

He bites the soft part of his cheek until he tastes pain. The secret parts are _all_ of them, when they suffer and die.

Maglor hands them over, by opening the bridge.

To run would look foolish. He wishes Curufin were beside him, but he can’t rightly see his brothers, in this head-pounding light. Maybe they are already here.

 _Fucking_ winter, setting in. Blinding them with chalk-written skies, with lily-livered half-kin who don’t even _understand_ what they should fear. That is why Fingon went, after all. He didn’t understand.

It’s cowardice, to be blind. It’s cowardice, it’s always—

_Their king is called Balor._ _His eye is monstrous and slays with a single glance. Who dares look upon him?_

Maglor does not turn. He waits, fancying himself to be another Athair. He has tried to be father and mother both, all this long-winding hell. He has tried to enforce old seniorities, in hidden rooms, as if the status of each ever mattered to Celegorm.

Maglor, like both father and mother, is weak.

_Celegorm, will you be the king? It’s a challenging role, I think you’d be impressive. He dies, you know_ , said Maedhros apologetically. _But he causes a good deal of chaos, first._

They pass him by. The litter, or bier, of sorts, passes him by without regard. Celegorm is spared almost no glance, as he was sought for no counsel. He does not look at Aredhel, whose eyes alone might find him.

He is thus rendered invisible, but there, oh, there, Maglor is a dog below Huan’s stature. What were bent wings might now be waiting haunches. The shoulders crooked and the jaw open, making ready to slaver with eagerness, to assure their conquerors that he shall do _anything anything anything_ —

Since Maedhros is returned to sate all hungers.

Celegorm, dogged, must ask: _What have six months of not-death done to that face? He used to be beautiful._

Fingon’s chin—the rescuer’s chin—is held proud and high, though he carries nothing. His hair hangs long. _He_ hates Celegorm nobly, for Celegorm is a Feanorian, and made the war an easy thing between them.

On the other side of the bridge, straggling shapes of strangers move. They are taking down the camp, or what is left of it. It has diminished in size. The tents that remain fall, banked white waves billowing down to nothing.

How? It is afternoon, only, but Celegorm lost the hours that mattered most. A deal has been brokered, Curufin would warn. Is Curufin here?

Why can’t he turn his head to look?

 _Anything._ Maglor would give them anything, but months ago, when the riderless horse was there, when the woman with the cruel knife and crueler words made terms—

Maglor gave _her_ nothing. Won _them_ nothing. Saved nothing.

Distant thunder, in Celegorm’s ears. But not from the sky.

Maedhros was beautiful, the best parts of color and carving that could be given him by their family lines written on his form. Along with his own secrets, Celegorm had hidden Maedhros’ fear inside himself, long ago and for as much time as he could. It was their unspoken pact.

It died with them.

( _He dies, you know_.)

The water speaks, as does the unknown storm. The lake, the river. What does the water tell a boy who hunts by his hound’s nose?

It says: nothing is _left_ , here. The scent washed away; the tracks obliterated.

Memory is dead, and the thing loved is put out, like a pair of eyes, like a stone upturned from the earth that closed a thin web of flesh over it, once.

There are so very many ways to be blind. Celegorm has seen them all in his own family.

(The first way is to shut your eyes.)

Celegorm does not follow them. He will not fall meekly into line like a herded sheep. He stays where he is; watching the ant-workers make little of the camp that threatened them, that now mingles with them.

He wishes, not for the first time, that he had something left to kill.

The gates are shut; the betrayal complete. Faintly came the sound of Maglor knocking the password to be let in, so that the newcomers may learn it.

 _Then_ Celegorm turns. _Then_ Celegorm realizes that Huan is not with him. 

They have laid Maedhros in the room that was all of theirs, once. The room that now is Maglor’s, Caranthir’s, Amras’. Celegorm does not enter to see. His pulse brings the storm with him, thumping in his throat, but that was always the storm. It would be panic for someone else, embarrassment for someone else, to see Maedhros and these enemies together.

For Celegorm, it is merely the sensation of running without running, rising speed and warmth, as he considers.

Maedhros’ old pack will be there, remnants of it divided between his brothers’ things. They have placed his bones among his memories. They would call this something else.

Huan is at that door. Huan slunk away, to join _Fingon_ —

No. To guard. He must—he must remember that there is something, _someone_ there to guard.

Celegorm stands in the corner of the longest hall, and the half-kin and their companions flit like wraiths around him. Cousins, neighbors, strangers. His blood, are they? Would they remember that still, if their need for shelter, for food, for power was removed?

The wraiths speak, at times, but the words are shapeless.

Curufin’s hand on his arm scarcely seems to belong to Curufin, but it jolts him into new awareness. It is sickening: a hand, with another to match it. They have their hands, Curufin and Celegorm. They have both their hands.

Celegorm chokes back the heat rising in his throat.

“What in hell,” Curufin whispers, deathly calm, “Did you let him do?”

They have all failed. Celegorm for hunting, Curufin for wandering the mine.

Maglor, most of all. But in _their_ blood, unshared by any so-called kin, is a hatred for this world. They cannot shake it, though they rule. And thus the dam they might have formed is splintered, dark water rushing in.

The dog-beggars are become wolves, the clouds in the sky are clouds fallen. Celegorm was hunting, and he brought back meat, but for whom? None of him feels human, none of the sights around him are human.

Maedhros should not look like that.

Should not live, as a corpse.

“Here you are,” Aredhel snaps. She is shorter than Celegorm remembers—or he is taller. He has seen her before, but now she is up against him, as close as they were the night they held each other in the dark.

He sneers, if only to keep that memory at bay.

(Maedhros was dead, then. In a way, the awful certainty let a kind of life go on.)

“Ah, Irisse,” Curufin drawls. “Come to gloat and preen?”

“Over having a dank roof above me and you for company? Unlikely.” She waves a hand. The lantern light turns her wan and jaundiced; it does the same to Curufin. “Go on—they’re waiting for you. Don’t you want to see him?”

“If you mean the bag of bones which Fingon can at last make a puppet of—” Curufin begins, but Celegorm does not hear the rest, for the thunder rolls too loud, too loud for Curufin’s savagery and Aredhel’s astonishment.

Defeat takes him at the knees, the heart, the throat, the eyes. He loses sight of—everything.

He loses the last thing he had.

Maglor did not so much as _hint_ , that this was to be the day they staked their claim.

“What do you need?” Aredhel’s voice in his ears. Aredhel’s hands on his elbows. She is tall for a woman, after all, and strong.

“Jesus,” says Curufin. “Not you, too. You’ve gone all watery.”

“I haven’t,” Celegorm rasps. “Fuck you, I haven’t.”

He opens his eyes, and they are still in the hallway, still trapped and painted in by life and death and the wraiths journeying between the two. Yet it is right, somehow, that the three of them are left alone.

“Which way are the kitchens?” Aredhel asks. “Come, you should eat and drink.”

Curufin is watching him, his lips in Athair’s tight press of rare silence. Celegorm nods to him, curtly: a reassurance or a concession: it is not _his_ to decide how Curufin’s mood will interpret anything. Then, to Aredhel, Celegorm looks truly.

He remembers why he always loved her—she never wants to let anyone fall.

 _Your mother_ , he could say, with as much violence as Curufin. _Your brother. What of them?_

Aredhel would heal him, if she could. She would take him to the kitchens. She would wash his face. She would pluck the dried deer-blood from his matted hair.

 _You’re a damned fool_ , Aredhel will say to him again and again, tomorrow or the day after that.

Maglor let them in, and thus he let Aredhel in also. Sometimes, Celegorm used to show her the secret pieces of his heart.

“I’ll go to him,” he mutters, chin thrust out. “And lay off. I’m not hungry.”

He still has his gun, under his short coat.

Does he know why he thinks of this?

The sight of Fingon, kneeling beside the bed, with the remaining hand in both of his.

Curufin and Aredhel remain in the hall outside; perhaps not together, for Curufin is restive and angry, and will not quickly put aside his grievance over Maglor’s tyranny. Celegorm fills the doorway; he knows his own height, the width of his shoulders, the weight of his gaze.

The bed. Maedhros in it. Fingolfin seated beside him, on a borrowed chair. Fingon, twice-damn him. As in the rest of the fort, there are others. There will always be others now, chaff to vermin-gnawed wheat.

Celegorm does not speak, but Fingolfin nods. That nod is a greeting. It concedes nothing, however.

To his son, Fingolfin says, “Food and drink?”

“Medicine,” Fingon answers, releasing not the hand that is in his charge. “It will be good to know their stock.”

Maedhros stitched Celegorm’s flesh closed, once, in this room. Who here knows of _that_? He was swift, comforting, restored in sufficiency as he did the restoring. That scar is hidden along the line of Celegorm’s right hip, and it healed cleanly. There are other marks—knives and bullets and the wide world have all written their names in Celegorm’s history.

Not all these wounds knew Maedhros’ touch.

There is a woman beside Fingon who has been hacked to bits and left to live. Bauglir and his kind must have fancied skinning an animal and setting it free; they did it more than once. Celegorm stares at her eyeless face (she has one eye, he discovers in a moment—it was turned from him), and at Gwindor who leans uneasily in a corner, waiting for orders.

How will these sort fit within Mithrim? Celegorm finds that he hates them all almost as personally as he hates his cousin: they think themselves Maedhros’ people, now.

Maedhros, sunken cheeks and bruises, white with bloodless stupor where he is not white with linen, has nothing to say for himself. Celegorm knew his brother when he was hurt—when nightmares tormented him—when he bled too much for concealment.

(Their pact was one of weakness.)

Celegorm chews his tongue. He, too, will say nothing. When he entered, Huan followed him in from his station outside. Now, his ribs brush against Celegorm’s legs. There is nowhere suitable to sit with any semblance of authority. Celegorm stations himself against the far wall.

Maedhros’ left hand is thin and bruised, yet the length of the fingers is right.

“Father,” Fingon says. “Is something amiss?”

Fingolfin shakes his head, but he does not stir, and Fingon’s eyes shift to Celegorm.

“You can’t—” Fingon begins, but then he shuts his mouth. Did his father give a silent command? Celegorm looks past all of them. He observed their poorly hidden language, but he will not show them that he did.

There are muttered whispers, next. Gwindor heaves himself up from the wall and comes close and reverent to Fingon’s side, murmuring supplications or offers of assistance.

Celegorm does not listen. Outside, the newcomers are under Maglor’s care, Finrod’s care.

Yes, they will all make a merry home of this tomb.

It is apparent that Fingolfin would leave them here, to establish himself as a sort of king beyond this room, if Celegorm and his gun and his gaze were not a threat at their very heart. Gwindor stalks out at last, in search of food, but that is not the same thing at all.

It is some comfort to Celegorm, knowing that he thwarts them so.

Huan, whether he agrees with this sentiment or not, stretches out to his full length between master and Maedhros.

_You can take Huan_ , said a boy.

 _I would not part him from you_ , said his brother.

Celegorm has not so much as touched him, yet. He wonders if he burns with fever, or if he is as cold as river-water. Fingon could tell him, but Celegorm will not ask Fingon. The wall at Celegorm’s back, where he stands, is more than a wall.

He is the only one who knows that.

He would have told a different Maedhros so many truths. _God_ , so many. He would have told him everything.

At last, Fingolfin lifts himself from the chair, which Celegorm half-hopes is an admission of defeat—but no, Finrod is at the door.

Finrod is Fingolfin’s strength, then, more than Fingon can be. Fingon’s loyalties are divided. The Feanorians have ever driven in their own wedges, with great effect, and though they harmed themselves sometimes by those same efforts, no one but a fool could doubt the power of the accordant pain.

Celegorm narrows his eyes. When Fingolfin has departed, with a word of thanks, Finrod does not take the chair.

“Estrela,” he says. “Please be seated. Fingon would rather crouch there, as you see, until he is sure that Maedhros is not further distressed. We’ve long since given up on telling him to be sensible about his own health.”

This, with a familiar warmth that set Celegorm’s teeth on edge.

The woman with one eye ducks her head but makes no answer. Perhaps she cannot speak. She does not look much like a woman at all: her hair is short and unruly, her clothes those of a man, but her frame and hands are small.

“If Father does not return in a moment,” Fingon says, “I may need to send someone else in his stead.” He lifts Maedhros’ left arm, to slip another blanket under it, and Celegorm nearly lurches forward. Nearly kills him, but knows he would not be able to live with the sight of blood spattered over Maedhros’ silent face.

“He will speak with Maglor, first, I expect,” says Finrod. “Of first concern is the sharing of supplies. Haleth left a good deal of the foodstores, that we might not come empty-handed.” Finrod sounds much the same as he ever did. When he turns to look full at Celegorm, there is nothing half-hearted in his gaze. Certainly nothing deferential. “His color is better than it was, Celegorm. Even I can see that, and I am no doctor.”

To reply aloud will assert his presence here more forcefully, but it will also break a spell, and threaten the wall at his back. Celegorm only shrugs.

Finrod paces to the window, stepping carefully over the scattered clothes and boots and belongings. Did Caranthir or Amras leave things so awry? It isn’t like them.

The question is answered the next moment, for Caranthir dashes into the room, his arms full of things. “Here,” he says, and then flushes dangerously when he sees Celegorm and Huan. “I’ve found them. I—”

His arms are full of shirts.

Celegorm’s shirts, but they weren’t always Celegorm’s.

Celegorm wants to leave this place.

He can’t.

Caranthir looks like Mother, in this moment; all stubborn subservience. He darts forward and thrusts the shirts into Fingon’s arms, as if he expected Celegorm to intercept him.

“Thank you,” Fingon says. It is impossible to tell, with Fingon, if he knew the gift should have come from another; if he even cares.

Maedhros used to rave about his kindness; Maglor bitterly conceded a certain gentleness, a naivete that was supposedly nobler in a stunted cousin’s form than it would be in any other.

But Celegorm has always seen Fingon for exactly what he is.

Proud and small-minded and merciful—and thus without justice.

Maedhros has no defense against him.

Maedhros would want to leave this place.


	3. Curufin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly spoilery TW at the end

It used to be a simple thing, hurting Maedhros. Ask him to make a choice—ask him to tell the truth. He would show himself in his bright plumage of pain at once.

Curufin loved him better than the rest of them, if one considered the circumstances in a certain light. He _knew_ him better. Knew how much of a threat he was to Athair’s leadership, while they both lived. Knew what a coward love had made of him.

(Do you see? Can anyone see? This is where and why love must end.)

There is no doubt, of course, that six months are unforgivable, because Maedhros still lives. But Curufin has not asked to be pardoned—not by his brothers. There is no one else to claim a right of judgment over him.

Fingon should never have sought truth, if he loved Maedhros. Truth has always wounded, where Maedhros is concerned.

He leaves Aredhel in the hall. Already, change has shaken Mithrim. The mine calls to him, as it always done, but he cannot be seen to disappear before he knows every new eye that watches.

 _Jesus, Athair_ , he thinks, with bitter fondness. _If you could only see, what they have done to your memory. If you could only see._

And what of himself? Yes, this is chiefly why he leaves Aredhel. She is too perceptive. Curufin opened up his breast, a day ago—revealing no particular secret, only entrails and weakness, which were enough.

He should never have crossed the water. He did not need to see.

It used to be a simple thing, healing Maedhros. Touch him with a trusting hand. Favor him with a kind word. He would permit you passage to the root of his power readily.

Curufin’s heart is beating so high and loud in his ears that, ordinarily, he would seek Celegorm’s company. Celegorm, the dear brute, would strengthen and steady him until he no longer needed either aid. And then, no matter how many weather-beaten house-servants of his uncle’s nosed about, no matter how high Artanis thought she could hold her yellow head, Curufin would set himself to rights.

But he cannot have Celegorm, now. Celegorm has passed into the room where lies the truth—or what is left of it.

And so, given nothing but the past, Curufin seeks his father. _I almost died, when I was young (when you were gone)._

This has already been his fate. He mustn’t risk it a second time. He cannot have Celegorm, or the mine—the two things that bring home to him.

His eyes fill with tears, there in the dim hall between Aredhel and strangers and others who are too well-known to be strangers, and so must be foes.

(Even in winter, his father’s hands were warm.)

(His father.)

 _I am all you left them_ , he thinks, the madness surging through him but not over him, a fire that will not burn if he does not stray to close. _I am all you left me._

_You died, when I was almost young._

On his way to nowhere, he passes Turgon. Turgon speaks in a low, frustrated rumble to Fingolfin, and they are alike in their stiff paper-board faces. Stubborn and lacking in vision, those two. Thus, Fingon remains the greater threat. Fingon does not lack vision. He was not content to believe in the loyalty of Maedhros’ brothers. He had to test it for himself.

What shall that test reveal?

If everyone told all the secrets that they had, the answer would be that Maglor killed Maedhros.

Curufin’s room—shared with Celegorm, now, when they sleep there at all—is unreachable. That is, it is just beside the other Feanorian chamber, which shall be a sickroom from now until the end of this age. As such, he wanders, lost in a known place.

He is among the other quarters, now. Mostly Rumil’s people sleep here, though relations between them and the Feanorian company have been reasonably friendly of late.

 _Yes_ , Curufin thinks, pausing before a door thrust half-ajar, and seeing the face and figure through it. _Very friendly._

She sees him, rises, and opens the door.

“Curufin?”

_I am but a woman,_ Nora said once. _It’s mine to help and heal._

But that’s not what he wants.

“You are not with the others,” he says coldly. Following his nose, and knowledge of the fort’s ordinary doings, supper preparations will soon begin in the broad Mithrim kitchen. Nora is ever-present, because she perceives herself to be a leader among the women.

 _That_ is why she attached herself to Maedhros, once upon a time. Curufin is not Maedhros; will never be Maedhros. He faces her, and they are nearly at eye-level with each other, for she is a tall woman and he is not yet finished growing.

He will be seventeen in two months. He doesn’t think she knows this.

Nora considers him. Her sandy hair is rather wild, escaping from its knot at her neck. Her dress, as always, is frowsy—intended to be neither neat nor serviceable, but to show the still-smooth skin of her throat and the rise of her breast. Curufin’s throat is dry.

She says, “There is other work for women. I came to see what little comforts I could find for your poor brother. I have had no proper sight of him, alas!”

 _So that is your purpose._ He is unchanged in _his_ , but he likes her the less for it. The less for curiosity, and Maedhros.

He wonders what Fingon would think, if this prying slattern were to slip inside the sickroom, wanting nothing more than to see the desolation of her favorite. Paining Fingon _is_ a tempting prospect, but Curufin weighs the evils against the good, and is certain in resolve.

Thankfully he still has his hands—smith’s hands, which shall be with _him_ as long as he lives. Unlike Maedhros, he would die only at the loss of them. Now, he twists a finger in the curls behind his ears. “My brother has all the help he needs,” he says. “But there is something you can do for me.”

(There was no curl in Athair’s hair. All this is from their mother. _His_ mother. Curufin can see her, as unlike Nora as the sun is from the moon. Red hair and rounded cheeks, thick arms and blunt hands. His mother’s body was shaped by children. Her face was not beautiful, but it was inviting. He knew she had power. It simply was not over _him_.)

He strips off his shirt and sits on the stool drawn up to Nora’s little table. Six women sleep in this room, on cots and a large bed that bulges, unmade, in the center of the floor. Nora’s hands are cool and dry against his neck and shoulders. She enjoys touching him, which is, in its own way, a repulsive weakness. One should not reveal that sort of liking.

“I do not want you to cut much of it,” he says quietly. “Make it neat at the back and over my ears. Wherever it curls.”

“Why do you worry over this now?” Nora asks, taking up her scissors. “Do you wish to look as you did when he…went away?”

Nora is a fool. Curufin watches a lock drift down, separating into fine dark strands on his chest. “Yes,” he says, in his most conciliatory way. “That is all.”

“Poor boy,” Nora says. She called Maedhros _poor_ , too. She folds layers of hair between her fingers and snips against them. “You are all such a sad, heroic lot. I admired your father, rest his soul, and you are so like him! It is not an easy thing, to lead in his stead—to lead men like this lot! But you have done it—you have done it all. The rest forget to be grateful, now your brother is brought back. But Curufin—I do not forget.”

Curufin stares at the wall. There is a mirror, rivered with green and yellow, but he chooses not to meet his own eyes in its murky surface. Nora’s fingers guide his chin left and right. She talks. She says, _we are alike, too, you and I. We see the strengths and flaws of Mithrim._ He does not reply.

When she has finished her work, he runs his hands over it and feels right again. His hair is thick and full and free of rebellious twists, save for the cowlick at the crown of his head. He can’t do anything, for that.

“Thank you,” he says, resenting even that small concession to manners. Then he rises, and reaches for his shirt. But Nora stops him, lifting a hand to the place where his throat meets his shoulder.

“It was nothing,” she says. “Here. For this, you can thank me.” And, moving against him, she kisses him lightly on the mouth.

Athair was always talking. In the forge, at the table, around the fireplace. Only when they went west did he change, and even then, Curufin could ferret out the old shape of him. Could draw it from its shadows to fill that spare frame.

Athair had a thousand lessons to impart, most of them pointed at other people. Curufin cherished the gift of those lessons that could only be for him.

( _Hand him a hammer, teasing. It is the wrong one. He knows by the weight. He slips it back without so much as a glance at it, but there—there is a smile on his lips. It is a good joke. A good trick._ )

No, not even in death will Athair lose the relentless gleam that defined him. Grandfather Finwe, in contrast, is a flat-painted ghost; a man made only for portraits. Indis is not kin. Grandmother Miriel stayed eerily on as a wound in Athair’s chest, long before the bullets landed there. She died with Athair. Athair was a star centering a universe. No one in his living orbit properly matched or met him, save Curufin.

He had to make a son for himself, to be understood. Fervently, Curufin believes that it took very little making.

 _I like Athair best_ , he would say, to vex Mother. _Athair likes me best_ , he would say, to hurt Maedhros.

Maedhros is ugly now. His useful hand is gone. What use, survival? What use?

Stretched on Nora’s bed, weary, he wonders if anger ought to have played the part it did. He was angry that she anticipated him; he had meant…he had meant to do _something_ , but until she kissed him, he was not certain what it was. In answer to her challenge, he seized her face in his hands and crushed his mouth against hers. He found at once that it required some undefinable skill, a prospect he had not considered before this.

She tasted sour, but she was pleased enough then. It was later, when they had gone to the bed, that she laughed at him.

He recalls the memory now with poisonous hatred, and something twined through the hatred that is a horrible desire to seek her out and bring her back. He did not enter this room with a single thought as to gaining or keeping Nora’s good opinion. Now that the consideration has entered the equation, it sickens him.

She has gone away. She dressed in front of him, and then she came around the side of the bed where he still lay, breathing too fast. She put her hand over his ribs, where his heart is.

“My, you have worked yourself very hard,” she said, smiling. She bent down, removing her hand, and kissed the spot where it had lain. “Perhaps you are old enough to have a woman, after all.”

He swallows, left alone. He has made a miscalculation somewhere. He isn’t sure what. Is he afraid that Nora will talk? No—no. He wanted _that_. A man can afford to be careless, if he is cold and strong enough. A little talk of his exploits will do him good.

But talk is one thing; to be found abandoned is another. He must leave her room. Slowly, he pushes himself up on his hands. He longs to scrub at his face with them, but they are not clean. He has a horror of filth; Athair was the same.

Athair—was Athair—

His eyes and throat are both dry now, stinging. He collects his rumpled trousers from the floor, his shirt from the table. He dresses.

Celegorm would be so angry, if he knew. An hour ago, Curufin would have told him, superior in tone and expression,

_Celegorm, you are all muscle and a good nose for hunting. You cannot expect to understand politics._

He wishes Celegorm would come and rage at him. When Celegorm is really angry, Huan has a hangdog look about him, skulking after his bright-burning master.

Yes, it is Celegorm who barks and snaps.

 _You little fool_ , Celegorm would say. _You call this politics? Who gives a flying shit for politics?_

The hall is empty. There is no waiting throng. His brothers are elsewhere.

(His brothers are with Maedhros.)

With November evening setting in, creeping in through the crevices of Mithrim’s corners and windows, Curufin shivers under the sweat dried on his skin.

He is filled with new disgust for Maedhros-as-he-was, Maedhros who drank and bedded and bled his way west. Celegorm didn’t say much, and Maglor spoke in whispers, but Curufin wasn’t a child, then.

He certainly isn’t now. Curufin has tried his hand at Maedhros’ diplomacy, and it has not hurt _him_. It has not driven _him_ mad.

Were he to drink whiskey now—and he almost wants to—it would not ruin him. All he truly wants, at present, is to find Celegorm. But that is usual; there is nothing odd about it.

(It is that or visit Athair’s grave. That or visit the mines.)

He must wash first, though. A dip in the lake would do it, but it would be powerful cold. Curufin picks up his step, forces his stride to be easy and smooth. As he passes the entrance to the main hall, he hears the clamor of many voices. They must be gathered around the long table: Mithrim’s horde and Fingolfin’s newcomers.

These are alliances he should be watching. Whatever goes on in the sickroom—have his brothers asserted authority? He should be watching.

Did he use his time as best he could?

_You little fool._

Celegorm wouldn’t say that. Not really. He’s as blunt as one of Athair’s larger hammers, but he does not hurt the hand that holds him.

Curufin’s eyes are not so dry now. It is a troublesome business, prophesying and planning as he must. Maglor is too much of an artist to lead. Celegorm can see nothing that is not before him. Caranthir is stupid, and Amras is young. What choice had Curufin? Weep at a pitiful bedside, offering prayers to a god who existed in no form but Fingolfin’s?

There are two small children waiting—or rather, loitering—near his quarters. He eyes them with suspicion but does not speak to them. They are someone else’s charge.

But the girl hollers after him.

“You can’t go in there!” she says. “He’s sleeping.”

Curufin turns to sneer at her. “Run along, you little bastards,” he says. “Or I’ll send our wolf to eat you.”

To his chagrin, she snorts derisively. “Aw, you won’t! We’ve met him. Gentle as a mouse.”

They have met Huan. They must have—Celegorm must be—

The door is sealed to him, sealed like the wall of a tomb. Curufin passes on. He leaves their quarters behind and exits the fort through the slim, half-secret door near Rumil’s study.

Outside, the sun has set.

The darkness is like all other darkness. He has grown used to the smell of this place. The touch of its wind. It laps the tears from his cheeks, revealing them to him. He considers the lake, over and over again.

And in the end, he finds himself there, crouched at its chilly edge, waving his hands through invisible waters. Black at his feet, silvered by lissome moonbeams towards its center point.

He washes his hands clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: underage sex, misogyny, um...Curufin has severe issues?


End file.
